What's Your Nature?

Become a Nature Up North explorer to share your encounters with wild things and wild places in New York's North Country. Post your wildlife sightings, landscape shots, photos from your outings, and even you organization's events!

Encounters

This icy trip to Lampson Falls turned into a memorable first snowshoeing experience for these two young women in the international student program at St. Lawrence - one from Sweden and the other from Finland. Both did an incredible job staying on their feet. Snowshoes or crampons highly recommended to anyone looking to visit the falls, the recent thaw/freeze cycle has made for slippery conditions!

We had a wonderful afternoon hike at Lampson Falls today with our spring crew of Nature Up North interns and research students. The weather was overcast and misty, but temps were in the high 20's and the falls were beautiful. It looks like quite a few people have made it out since last week's snowfall, but snowshoes and crampons helped with wet and slippery conditions, especially around the falls. For a few students, it was their first experience on snowshoes!

The day before was 58 degrees with heavy rain all day, and down to zero by morning. Add in a foot of snow overnight and the Oswegatchie river was as high as it gets in the spring. The water was running at least 6-7 feet above normal, and had already dropped about 18" by the time we were there in the afternoon. There was a pretty big ice jam several hundred yard downstream of the trestle. The water and ice were backed up about 200 yards into the woods from the banks of the river. It was only 2 degrees, but made for a fun and quick snowshoes trek.

Frigid temperatures and snow covered fields gave way this week to 50 degree weather and a heavy downpour of rain today in Canton. Most of the snow has melted, and I can't help but think that the green beneath it looks out of place this time of year.